Bearsted is lived in by settled homeowners in their late forties, and nobody here is passing through. Nearly nine in ten households own their home. The typical resident is close to fifty. About a third of adults have a degree. Renting is something a few people do while they wait to buy.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 census unless stated otherwise. About 86% of households own their home, which puts owner-occupiers firmly in charge of every residents' meeting. About 11% rent privately and about 3% rent from a social landlord. With so few tenants, the village is run by people who own the ground under their feet and expect to stay put.
The median age is 49. People aged 25 to 44 make up about 20% of residents, a thin slice for the age group that usually does most of the moving, buying and school runs. Bearsted skews towards people who got their mortgage years ago and the grown-up children who've moved out since. Young professionals will find the peer group small.
Money is not the problem. The Office for National Statistics models average household income at about £73,000 a year before tax for the financial year to March 2023. It's a modelled figure for that year, not a payslip from today. It still describes a village that can afford its own house prices, which is how the house prices got that high.
Bearsted has about 3,650 households, and lone parents head about 7% of them. Family life here mostly means two parents and a car each, a pattern many residents would struggle to picture changing.
The rest of the mix is mostly families and older residents. Couples with dependent children make up about 24% of households. People living alone account for about 23%, and most of those are pensioners: single pensioners alone make up about 16% of all households. That's part of the same group, not an extra one on top. It's a village where the family home often outlasts the family, and one person ends up with four bedrooms and a garden nobody else uses.
About 34% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree, about 15% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. Graduates and non-graduates live side by side, and this village is not a student haunt. Anyone opening a late-night bar here will have a small crowd and a lot of complaints.
The people are one of Bearsted's real strengths: settled, comfortable, owner-occupied and quick to notice anything changing.